Breaching cultural worlds with the village school: Educational visions, local initiative, and rural experience at S. T. Shatskii's Kaluga School System, 1919-1932

Slavonic and East European Review

Volumn 82, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 847-885

  Partlett, William ^a  

^a CHRIST CHURCH   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 33745973570     PISSN: 00376795     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (127)

1. From an address given to the All-Russian Congress of Enlightenment Workers in 1918. Quoted from E. M. Balashov, Shkola v Rossisskom Obshchestve 1917-1927: Stanovlenie 'Novogo Cheloveka', St Petersburg, 2003 (hereafter, Shkola v Rossuskom Obshchestve), p. 22.
2. Here I define 'culture' as the structure of values, beliefs, and attitudes that shape the way people assign meaning to the world, constraining behaviour and determining action. See M. David-Fox, 'What is Cultural Revolution', Russian Review, 58, 1999, pp. 181-200 (hereafter, 'What is Cultural Revolution').
3. Here, I define ideology as a 'form of political thinking, reflecting [...] variegated perceptions and conceptualisations of existing or imagined social worlds', M. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach, Oxford, 1996, p. 22.
4. In this way, ideology shapes cultural outlook - the way that meaning and patterns arc assigned to behaviour. For more on this topic, see C. Geertz, 'Ideology as a Cultural System', The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, New York, 1973.
5. See M. David-Fox, Revolution of the Mind: Higher Learning Among Bolsheviks, 1918-1929 (hereafter, Revolution of the Mind), London, 1997, pp. 2-3.
6. T. Shanin in The Roots of Otherness: Russia's Turn of the Century. Vol 1: Russia as a Developing Society, London, 1985, discusses the gulf that existed between the peasant and non-peasant population.
7. This stereotyped Bolshevik view of the peasant world as 'other' and the desire to eradicate it was a long-standing goal of the Russian intelligentsia (of which the Bolsheviks were an extreme group). As Cathy Frierson describes the tsarist intelligentsia: 'distant from the village, viewing the peasantry as other, and assuming the role of the sole active agents in Russian culture who would bear the responsibility for moving it forward.' C. A. Frierson, Peasant Icons, Oxford, 1993, p. 194.
8. The Bolsheviks were intent on large-scale cultural transformation from their seizure of power in October. For more on this long-term attempt at cultural transformation, see David-Fox, 'What is Cultural Revolution'. Also, see S. Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia, London, 1992.
9. O. Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution 1917-1921, Oxford, 1989 (hereafter, Peasant Russia, Civil War).
10. C. Clark, Uprooting Otherness: The Literacy Campaign in NEP-era Russia, London, 2000.
11. P. Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, Cambridge, 1985.
12. D. Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless, London, 1998.
13. D. Hoffman's Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, London, 2003 (hereafter, Stalinist Values), also looks at this cultural transformation, but at official policy as an aggregate throughout the entire country.
14. There is relevant scholarship on the village school and rural transformation in other time periods. Y. Slezkine's 'From Savages to Citizens: The Cultural Revolution in Soviet Far East', Slavic Review, 51, Winter 1992, pp. 705-30 (hereafter, 'From Savages to Citizens') explores the effects of Stalin's institutions of cultural change from 1928-38 in the arctic and sub-arctic north (including education).
15. There is good scholarship on the effect of the school (and literacy) on rural transformation during the tsarist period. See B. Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture, and Popular Pedagogy, 1861-1914, Berkeley, CA, 1986 (hereafter, Peasant Schools)
16. and J. Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Opinion, 1861-1917, Princeton, NJ, 1985 (hereafter, When Russia Learned to Read). See section entitled 'The pre-Tsarist Legacy' for more information on these books.
17. Quoted from M. David-Fox, Revolution of the Mind, p. 5.
18. The First Experimental Station comprised both a Moscow and a Kaluga branch. The Moscow branch was smaller and was the administrational centre, comprising the central kindergarten, a nine-year labour school, and the central Pedagogical Institute. A. M. Kuzmicheva, Pervaia shkola Obninskaia (stranitsy istorii), Obninsk, 2001 (hereafter, Pervaia shkola Obninskaia), pp. 16-17.
19. There were sixteen primary schools in the Station. Ten were established during the tsarist period and were incorporated into the Station. These were the Ugodsko-Zavodskaia (1), Krivskaia (2), Belkinskaia (3), Velichkovskaia (4), Peredol'skaia (5), Mikhailovskaia (6), Belousovskaia (7), Triasskaia (8), Lubitskaia (9), Kabitsinskaia (10). Five were set up by the Station in 1919 and 1920: Piatkinskaia (11), Samsonovskaia (12), Dobrinksaia (13), Strelkovskaia (14), Ternikovskaia (15), Potresovskaia (16). One more school was set up very late but it is not counted here since it hardly featured in the Station (Krivosheinskaia school). The lone secondary school was the Ugodsko-Zavodskaia. The six kindergartens were located in Dobroe, Krivsko, Potresove, Piatkino, and Ugodski-Zavod. See A. M. Kuzmicheva, Pervaia shkola Obninskaia, pp. 16-17.
20. V. Belyaev, Stanovlenie i razvitie innovatsionnoi kontseptsii S. T. Shatskogo, Moscow, 1999 (hereafter, Stanovlenie i razvitie), p. 177.
21. The Declaration on the United Labour School (1918) borrowed heavily from tsarist pedagogical thought. Shatskii, who was heavily influenced by both John Dewey and L. Tolstoi, was one of the leaders of tsarist pedagogical theory. For more see, E. Balashov, Shkola v Rossisskom Obshchestre, pp. 19-30.
22. V. Belyaev, Stanovlenie i razvitie, pp. 1-32.
23. D. Raleigh, Experiencing Russia's Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917-1922, Princeton, NJ, 2002.
24. A. Pred, Making Histories and Constructing Human Geographies, Boulder, CO, 1990.
25. See also F. F. Korolev, Sovietskaia shkola v period sotsialisticheskoi industrializatsii, Moscow, 1959.
26. The best anecdotal accounts are J. Dewey, Impressions of Soviet Russia, New York, 1929
27. and T. Woody, New Minds, New Men? The Emergence of the Soviet Citizen, New York, 1932.
28. The best example of the stereotyped view is S. Rosen's Education and Modernization, London, 1971 (hereafter, Education and Modernization), which juxtaposes a chapter on the early Soviet period as the 'Experimental Period of the 1920s' with the chapter 'The Conservative Period (1930s to 1950s)'.
29. Other Western analysis of the relationship between education and ideology tends towards the simplistic: N. Grant, Soviet Education, New York, 1968 (hereafter, Soviet Education), p. 31: 'It is a fair assumption that anything we observe in the Soviet schools will rarely be unofficial or accidental.'
30. S. Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts under Lunacharskii, London, 1970
31. and Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921-1934, Cambridge, 1979.
32. L. Holmes, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917-1931, Bloomington, IN, 1991 (hereafter, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse).
33. L. Holmes, Stalin's School: Moscow's Model School no. 25, 1931-1937, Pittsburgh, PA, 1999 (hereafter, Stalin's School) details the Stalinist period.
34. This is particularly true in view of the growing number of books detailing the experience of the Russian Revolution. See M. Steinberg, Visions of Revolution, 1917, New Haven, CT, 2001.
35. Quoted in L. Kirschenbaum, Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviel Russia, 1917-1932, London, 2001 (hereafter, Small Comrades), p. 165.
36. 'In 1926, the under twenties made up just under half of the rural population', Steve Smith, The Russian Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, 2002, p. 141. It is especially important to understand their experience of the 1920s because they were the generation that would experience the subsequent purges of the 1930s and the Second World War.
37. Kirschenbaum, Small Comrades.
38. See A. Wildman, The Defining Moment: Land Charters and the Post-Emancipation Agrarian Settlement in Russia, 1861-1863, Pittsburg, PA, 1996.
39. J. Burds, Peasant Dreams and Market Politics: Labor Migration and the Russian Village, 1861-1905, Pittsburgh, PA, 1998.
40. For a more general look at the commune during the tsarist period, see B. Mironov, 'The Russian Peasant Commune after the Reforms of the 1860s', Slavic Review, 44, 1985, pp. 438-76.
41. Though the government did try to intervene more closely in this growth of village schools in the decades prior to 1917, they still poured most educational money into elite secondary institutions and higher education. See J. McClelland, Autocrats and Academics: Education, Culture, and Society in Tsarist Russia, Chicago, IL, 1979 (hereafter, Autocrats and Academics).
42. Ben Eklof's Peasant Schools, provides the most detailed source on rural transformation and the village school during the tsarist period. Other scholarship tends to focus on higher education and on education for the privileged, for example McClelland, Autocrats and Academics, and D. Brower, Training the Nihilists: Education and Radicalism in Tsarist Russia, Ithaca, NY, 1975.
43. See Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read.
44. Eklof refers to a great deal of 'wastage' where peasant children would later lose their literacy skills because of a lack of practice (Peasant Schools, p. 474).
45. and J. McClelland, Autocrats and Academics, pp. 116-18. However, the effect of growing literacy on modernity is more contentious. Brooks ties a rising 'popular culture based on literacy' to Russian modernity (p. xiii). Eklof, on the other hand, argues that 'peasants supported literacy, but they were not "becoming modern"' (p. 478). Indeed, the high incidence of regressive literacy and Brooks's failure to demonstrate conclusively that peasants were learning from reading rather than just learning it as a skill suggest that literacy did not have the large effect that Brooks maintains.
46. No specific work has been done on tsarist education in Kaluga, but statistics reveal that Kaluga had a large number of schools for its size (744) and that they were typical of village schools. B. Eklof, Peasant Schools, p. 134.
47. NA RAO, 'Dokumenty osnovnykh Kaluzhskikh kursov', 1919-20, d. 259, l. 31. Hereafter, if omitted, assume that the archive is the NA RAO, the fond number is 1, and the opis' number is 1 (fond #1 comprise only one opis').
48. 'Doklady, otchety, protokoly o rabote Kaluzhskogo otdeleniia', 1919-30, d. 228, ll. 21-22. This pedagogical example is based on Froebel.
49. 'Stat'ia o novoi derevenskoi shkole', 1920-28, d. 113, l. 12.
50. 'Doklady i protokoli zasedanii no vneshkol'noi rabote', 1920-26, d. 309, l. 1.
51. S. Shatsky, A Teacher's Experience: A Collection, Moscow, 1981, trans. Catherine Judelson (hereafter, A Teacher's Experience), p. 197.
52. Dewey, Impressions of Soviet Russia, New York, 1929, p. 108.
53. 'Protokoly', 1919-1920, d. 68, l. 31.
54. 'Musikal'naia rabota', no date given, d. 72, l. 11.
55. S. Shatskii, 'Kto vinovat?', Pedagogicheskie sochineniia, 4 vols, Moscow, 1962-65 (hereafter, Pedagogicheskie sochineniia), 3, p. 176.
56. Shatsky, A Teacher's Experience, p. 180.
57. 'Protokoli sobranii kul'turnykh rabotnikov', 1919-21, d. 213, l. 310.
58. 'Doklady po voprosy po "obshchestvennoi rabote shkoly"', 1919-28, d. 103, l. 23.
59. 'Ekskursii: doklady, besedy, i plany', 1921-22, d. 73, l. 52.
60. 'Detskii zhurnaly: Bodraia Zhizn'', 1924, d. 220, l. 27.
61. 'Informatsionnyi otdel: Protokoly, otchety, smety', 1919-27, d. 85, l. 31.
62. 'Rabota nad programmami shkoly', 1922-32, d. 116, l. 34.
63. 'Doklady o rabote nad programmoi', 1921-23, d. 269, l. 12.
64. 'Rabota nad programmant shkoly', 1922-32, d. 116, l. 413.
65. 'Zhurnal'', 15 March 1920, d. 125, l. 2.
66. 'Otchetnyi material shkolnogo otdela', 1920-26, d. 229, ll. 192-94.
67. 'Dokumenty o rabote v derevne', 1919-26, d. 283, ll. 12-19.
68. 'Protokoly uchitel'skikh sobranii', 1919-22, d. 227, ll. 9-14. Especially in the early period, the village schools would not have functioned without the active support of the local population.
69. 'Protokoly pedagogicheskogo soveta, doklady, otchety', 1920-23, d. 230, l. 33.
70. 'Protokoll sobranii kul'turnykh rabotnikov', 1919-21, d. 213, l. 28.
71. 'Rabota nad GUS'om', d. 247, l. 53.
72. 'Detskie zhurnal: Bodraia Zhizn", 1924, d. 220, l. 75
73. This was particularly true when these school festivals demonstrated the use of an object (like a radio) that was exotic in the village. 'Detskie sochineniia na raznye temy', 1924-30, d. 246, l. 78.
74. 'Detskie sochineniia po razlichnoi teme', no date given, d. 244, l. 187.
75. 'Doklady i protokoly vneshkol'nogo otdela', 1920-26, d. 309, l. 41.
76. R. Tucker, 'Lenin's Bolshevism as Culture in the Making', in A. Gleason, P. Kenez, and R. Stites (eds), Bolshevik Culture, Bloomington, IN, 1985, p. 34.
77. Oskar Anweiler points out that Shatskii was more concerned with practicality than ideology or pedagogical theory than any other pedagogue in the Section. Oskar Anweiler, 'Leben und Wirksamkeit des russischen Paedogogen Stanislaw Teofilowitsch Shazkhij', International Review' of Education, 10, 1964, 2, pp. 141-61.
78. S. Shatskii, Pedagogicheskie sochineniia, 2, p. 257.
79. 'Shkoly Pervoi Opitnoi Stantsii', no date given, d. 290, l. 41.
80. 'Sbornik detskikh socheneniia', 1921-29, d. 241, ll. 64-122.
81. 'GUS i sel'skaya shkola', 1927-28, d. 237, l. 21.
82. 'Shkol'naia rabota v Kaluge', 1927-28, d. 238, l. 76.
83. 'Uchitel'skie sobranii v kolonii Bodraia Zhizn', 1926-28, d. 221, l. 182.
84. 'Letniaia rabota v Kaluzhkom raione', 1924-25, d. 313, l. 35.
85. This view of the effect of the surroundings on behaviour was common currency during the period. For one example, behaviourism was a popular theory. See Harry Daniels, Vygotsky and Pedagogy, London, 2001, for more on this topic and its relation to educational theory.
86. 'Doshkol'naia rabota', 1918-27, d. 145, l. 75.
87. 'Klubnaya rabota v kolonii Bodraia Zhizn", 1926-28, d. 221, l. 87.
88. 'Detskie sochineniia na razlichnye temy', 1924-30, d. 243, l. 52.
89. 'Lichnii arkhiv Shatskogo', no date given, d. 332, l. 17-19.
90. 'Klubnaia rabota v kolonii Bodraia Zhizn'', d. 221, l. 82.
91. This echoes Holmes's argument that 'policy follows practice': The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse, pp. 69-83.
92. V. N. Shul'gin denounced him in the February edition of 'Vecherniaia Moskva' as an 'ideologue of the right wing of Moscow pedagogues'. See V. I. Belyaev, Stanovlenie i razvitie, p. 34.
93. Director of the School Methods Institute, he was a consistent advocate of radical, classbased methods. See Holmes, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse, p. 78.
94. Feliks Fradkin in School and Society in Tsarist and Soviet Russia: Selected Papers from the Fourth World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, ed. B. Eklof, Harrogate, 1990.
95. 'Protokoly i metody iz Kalugi', 1925-29, d. 240, l. 18.
96. 'Plany, roditel'skie sobraniia, i razlichnye sochineniia', 1927-30, d. 236, l. 176.
97. 'Sel'skokhoziaistvennaia rabota v Kaluge', 1930-32, d. 224, l. 97.
98. 'Pedagogicheskie izmeneniia', no date given, d. 157, l. 412.
99. 'Proizvodstvennye plany detskogo sada', 1928-30, d. 354, l. 82.
100. 'Doklady Shatskogo o rabote 1-oi opytnoi stantsii', 1928-34, 121, l. 12.
101. 'Samostoiatel'naia rabota', 1927-1930, d. 257, l. 86.
102. 'Obshchestvennaia rabota', 1928-30, d. 222, l. 93.
103. 'Doklady Shatskogo o rabote i-oi opytnoi stantsii', 1928-34, d. 121, l. 71.
104. 'Doklady po voprosu po "obshchestvennoi rabote shkoly"', 1919-28. 103, l. 11.
105. 'Detskie sochineniia', 1920-29, d. 245, l. 42.
106. 'Stati o derevenskoi shkole', 1924-30, 3. 315, l. 12.
107. 'Doklady Shatskogo o rabote v 1-oi opytnoi stantsii', 1928-30, d. 104, l. 12.
108. 'Detskie zhurnal: Bodraia Zhizn", d. 220, l. 11.
109. Children's essay from S. T. Shatskii, 'Shkola i byt derevni', Na putiakh k novoi shkole, No. 6, June 1924, p. 61.
110. 'Rabota nad GUS'om', no date given, d. 247, l. 74.
111. Hoffman, Stalinist Values, p. 45.
112. Shatskii, Pedagogicheskie sochineniia, 3, p. 200.
113. 'Sbornik detskikh sochenenii', 1921-29, d. 241, l. 96.
114. 'Detskii zhurnal: Bodraia Zhizn'', no date given, d. 220, l. 75.
115. Peter McLaren, Schooling as Ritual Performance: Towards a Political Economy of Educational Symbols and Gestures, New York, 1993, p. 220.
116. 'Detskii zhurnal: Bodraia Zhizn'', 1924, d. 220, l. 18.
117. 'Stati o derevenskoi shkole', 1924-30, d. 315, l. 42.
118. S. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, Stalinism as Civilization, Berkeley, CA, 1995 (hereafter, Magnetic Mountain).
119. Sixteen out of twenty answered that they wanted to be Communists. 'Antireligioznaia rabota i voprosniki', 1927-33, d. 294, ll. 12-67.
120. The best examples of this kind of simplification are S. Rosen's Education and Modernization, and N. Grant's Soviet Education. Larry Holmes's work hints at this dynamism in educational policy but does not point to it explicitly: The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse.
121. James Muckle, A Guide to the Soviet Curriculum: What the Russian Child is Taught in School, New York, 1988
122. and S. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain.
123. T. Shanin, Peasants and Peasant Society, Baltimore, MD, 1971, esp. pp. 275-337. This work discusses how peasant societies use 'hinge men' or 'brokers' to mediate between the village and the outside world.
124. O. Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War, and M. Perrie, 'The Peasants', in R. Service (ed.), Society and Politics in the Russian Revolution, New York, 1992, pp. 12-34.
125. Eklof, 'Peasant Sloth Reconsidered: Strategies of Education and Learning in Rural Russia before the Revolution', Journal of Social History, 14, 1981, 3, p. 360.
126. See C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, New York, 2000, p. 64.
127. D. Apter, Ideology and Discontent, New York, 1964, pp. 18-21.